Hospital Hiring on Hold

Attached an article titled " Rare drop in healthcare hiring brings Miami-Dade its slowest job growth in three years" which highlights the dependence of the healthcare industry on (ir)rational political decisions made in Tallahassee and Washington. Small business owners like me and hospital executives have to pay attention to the grinding stalemate resulting from the ideological rigidity of our Florida legislature. The refusal to reach ANY decision regarding the Medicaid expansion and acceptance of federal money borders not only on legislative malpractice but essentially forces healthcare business leaders to put hiring decisions on hold. Hospitals, which are the largest employers in South Florida, expected that with the Medicaid expansion the numbers of uninsured would drop, thereby decreasing the costly treatment of uninsured in emergency room. But by providing health insurance for more people through Medicaid and other programs, including the requirement that everyone obtain health insurance, there should be less need for federal government payments under the “Disproportionate Share Hospital” (DSH) program. DSH payments are made to hospitals that serve a high number of patients without health insurance as well as a high number of Medicaid patients. Starting in 2014, the government will reduce total DSH allotments by $0.5 billion, and that reduction will increase to $4 billion per year by 2020. But without Medicaid expansion and facing diminishing DHS payments hospitals have no other choice but to defer scheduled workforce expansion. Small business owners like me also expected to see increased Medicaid payments for primary care physicians and an expansion of their insured patient base. Now, I will wait and see and I definitely won't hire new staff. Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, our legislators appear to live in splendid isolation from the real world. They seem to be more concerned about ideological correctness than solving problems that affect all of us. Yours Bernd